Since the early 1990s, the number of people using the World Wide Web and the Internet has grown at a substantial rate. As more users take advantage of the services available on the Internet by registering on websites, posting comments and information electronically, participating in the social or professional networks, or simply interacting with companies that post information about others (such as online newspapers), more and more information about users becomes publicly available online. Naturally, individuals, organizations, and companies such as professionals, parents, college applicants, job applicants, employers, charities, and corporations have raised serious and legitimate concerns about coping with the ever-increasing amount of information about them available on the Internet, because online content about even the most casual Internet users can be harmful, hurtful, or even false.
The process of evaluating a user in a variety of professional or personal contexts has become increasingly sensitive to the type and quantity of information available about that user on the Internet. A user may want to determine the level of visibility of themselves or of other users on the publicly available information sources. Moreover, one may want to find out whether each information contributes to a positive or a negative visibility for the user. Further, one may want to assess the overall visibility of a user, whether a user is highly visible or not, and in each case, whether that visibility is a positive or a negative visibility, that is amounting to a good or to a bad reputation. A user may want to identify and remove publicly available information that contribute to a negative reputation and instead highlight those that contribute to a positive reputation.
Further a user may desire an easy way to assess whether she, or somebody she is interacting with, has accrued an overall reputation that is generally positive or negative or positive or negative with regard to a certain aspect of their reputation. Exemplary interactions of a user with another include, for example, beginning a romantic relationship, offering an employment or business opportunity, or engaging in a financial transaction. As the amount of available online information about a user increases, the process of sifting through all of that information, assessing its relative import, classifying it, and synthesizing it down to a general assessment of the user's public online reputation becomes more daunting.